Collaboration is widely understood to be a strategic option for grantmakers looking to leverage resources and maximize impact.  But as Tade Aina, program director of the Higher Education and Libraries program at the Carnegie Corporation of New York makes clear in this interview, funders who come to complex social challenges with predetermined answers would probably do well to go it alone.

Maybe I’m a sucker for a good metaphor, but I was moved by Tade’s grasp of the “zenlike” approach that foundation program officers need to adopt when trying to advance a collaborative effort. For Tade, grantmakers shouldn’t be gatekeepers; they should be “platforms” for the sharing and dissemination of knowledge, ideas, and values. Inherent in that assessment is a profound respect for differences in organizational culture and a frank acknowledgment of the deeply entrenched nature of so many of the social challenges that confront us today.

To read the rest of the post, go to PND.

If anyone took that finding to heart, it has to be the Heinz Endowments, which opened up a section of its Web site, In the Spotlight, over a year ago to allow grantees to post their own content, for two weeks at a time, and without advance permission from the foundation.

Linda Braund, communications manager, who oversees the effort for the Heinz Endowments, says since the project’s launch, some 40 grantee organizations have produced and posted wide-ranging multimedia content to the foundation’s site. Then, as now, the purpose of setting aside the section of the web site for grantees to tell their own stories, and as they know best, was to help them make beneficial connections that might support their growth.

In this brief video interview, Doug Root, director of communications for the Heinz Endowments, recalls his initial concerns — which at the time he described as “definitely a scary move for us because it meant giving up a lot of control — and how since the has project unfolded, as well as how it has been received by board and staff. If there is a down side to the effort, Root’s not saying.

In addition to capturing Root’s impressions, I asked Braund if she had any advice for other foundations willing to share their website with grantees. She said:

Don’t be discouraged by internal resistance to opening up your site and letting grantees post directly. Some people at the Endowments were genuinely worried that we could run into trouble with inappropriate content, and that was the biggest obstacle that I faced in getting the Spotlight online. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be aware of what’s being posted — I get an email with a link every time anything is posted to our site so that I can check it out. But, don’t let fear of what your grantees are going to say stop you from allowing them to post directly without waiting for approval from you. We have gained a lot of rich, authentic content on our site about the work our grantees are doing in the community — without a lot of work and time on our part.

Dare we say it again? Come in, the water’s fine!

Marc is a self-described “message zealot” who is using strategies like this to enlist his colleagues in developing content. He’s obviously on the right track because there’s no way limited staffs can develop all the content needed to fuel hungry sites. If our budgets don’t expand, we’ve got to enlist volunteers or existing staff. Either way, Marc’s strategy ensures they stay on point.

That drive to be innovative also has many practitioners looking for ideas and inspiration wherever they can find them.

Take, for instance, Rebecca Noricks, communications manger for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. As she describes in this interview — produced by PhilanthroMedia for The Communications Network — while reading a home decorating magazine she noticed “QR” codes peppered throughout the publication. According to Noricks, when the barcode-like graphics are are scanned using a smartphone equipped with a special app, the phone’s brower or video player will open, providing access to additional online content related to what’s in the print publication.

After conferring with her colleagues, Noricks said Kellogg decided to include QR codes in the foundation’s printed annual report this year “so that the video-related content we created on the grantee profiles/highlights could also be viewed by smart phone users as they paged through the book.”

Based on her foundation’s one experiment using QR codes, Noricks said she expects “this technology and tool should be something all of us in philanthropy will start seeing more.” She adds that “it’s something we should think about using.”

If you want to check out Kellogg’s QR “code-filled” annual report, download a pdf version here: wkkf.org/​knowledge-center/​resources/​2010/​12/​WK-Kellogg-Foundation-2010-Annual-Report-Dispatches-Social-Change-in-Action.aspx.

Okay, so maybe cows aren’t going to teach you anything about social media. But Sylvia Burgos Toftness is so crazy about them that she launched both a grass-fed beef operation and a blog to share all the lessons she is learning.

As you will hear from this diavlog produced for The Communications Network, Sylvia’s passion has pushed her to to expand her knowledge in ways that significantly enhance her effectiveness as communications lead for the Northwest Area Foundation. In addition to producing a rich array of written content for her farming blog, called Bronx to Barn, Sylvia conducts video interviews with agricultural experts to include whenever she meets them. She also produces a weekly radio show call Deep Roots.

Harvesting Social Media Lessons from Communications Network on Vimeo.

For Sylvia, it’s farming. For me, it multimedia content focused on queer fashion that I produce through my site: dapperQ.com. If you are struggling to find time to hone your social media skills, you might find it easiest to do when “milking” passion reserved for your avocational interests. Whatever it takes, right?

Highlights: Chris Kabel on Successful Foundation-Grantee Relationships from PhilanthroMedia on Vimeo.

Chris Kabel, program officer at the Northwest Health Foundation, is one of the high-performing program officers profiled in the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s research report, “Working with Grantees: Keys to Success and Five Program Officers Who Exemplify Them.” Through this research, CEP identified four keys to strong funder-grantee relationships. In this conversation with PhilanthroMedia, Kabel discusses these keys, focusing his approach to forming and strengthening relationships with the organizations his foundation funds.

We’re all familiar with the expression “fighting words,” but even I wasn’t prepared for the intensity of the verbal exchange that occurred when Communications Network contributor Susan Herr, and producer of our ongoing series of video chats, sat down to talk with our much-loved anti-jargon campaigner, Tony Proscio.

Admittedly it was a smart interview technique, and her tongue appears early on in the video to be planted somewhat firmly against her cheek. But if you’re not listening carefully, or you get momentarily distracted when she says it, you might miss the disclaimer that this was done all in good fun.

Still, in good fun or not, in all the years I’ve known Proscio, and have had the pleasure of seeing him eviscerate the use of use muddy, obscure and downright silly phrases in writing and speaking about foundation and nonprofit work, I’ve never seen him asked to argue his point against someone claiming that jargon can be useful.

If you watch the video, I think you’ll agree, that he succeeds in making a mockery of Herr’s mocking arguments.

And what do our two veterans of the video combat have to say about their experiences?

Here’s Tony:

When Susan asked me if I’d be willing to join her in a diavlog on the merits of jargon, I was pretty sure I’d heard every defense of philanthropic techno-speak there was. I’d heard “there simply is no substitute for capacity”! I’d heard “jargon is the only way to keep things brief!” I’d heard “I don’t have time to spend hours thinking up clever new expressions!”

But I have to admit, Susan hit me with a new one. It’s around 19:00 in the video, and it opens the jargon debate to whole new panoramas of psychoanalysis. (Hint: it has to do with the tingly feeling that goes up your leg every time you hear yourself say infrastructure.) Until this conversation, I never realized that low self-esteem was such a problem in our business. How did I miss this?

Seriously, this was a fun conversation, highly unlikely to send you back to your analyst’s sofa. It might — I’m not promising anything, just maybe-could-possibly-might — take some of the thrill out of the sound of metrics as it rolls dulcetly off your tongue. And if so, … well I’ll call it a good day’s work.

(And for those of you who are about to flame poor Bruce — or worse, flame me — for allowing a salacious reference to tingly legs on this family-type blog, calm down. It’s just an innocent paraphrase from Chris Matthews. Honest.)

And from Susan, comes this contrite response:

As one simultaneously enchanted with new media and creative language, I’m perhaps more susceptible than most to the sins of “jargon.” But Father Tony’s gentle guidance helped me see the error of my ways. Now I know my quest to communicate the wonder of God’s world must include short words, boring words too.

Like I said, I think this video succeeds in helping us continue to make the case we need to be diligent in our in our jargon-reducing efforts — which is why we also invite you to check out our jargon finder. Yet, if for some reason you suddenly begin musing aloud that jargon is good, let us know so we can yank this video asap.

Now…if you have the capacity for it, go to the video.

Wisestamp is a free web-based program that enables users to customize the signature of their e-mails. I like the graphic nature of Wisestamp that enables me to use icons — rather than written addresses – for all the networks through which you can reach me. While my signature includes Twitter, Skype, LinkedIn, Vimeo and Facebook, options offered by Wisestamp are extensive (offering yet another demonstration of how “with it” you are!)

For the purposes of keeping regular when it comes to Twitter, Wisestamp enables me to include an RSS feed of my most recent Tweet at the bottom of my signature. Seeing it every day, on every e-mail, is the encouragement I need to make sure that my offerings are fresh and pithy. For those who don’t follow me @philanthromedia, it also provides a sample of the topics I focus on and why e-mail recipients might want to follow me.

Assuming you have a vibrant life beyond work (and perhaps even an array of social networks including Twitter that support your avocational interests) Wisestamp enables you to customize and easily switch between business and personal signatures.

On the downside, it took me about an hour to figure out the honestly quite intuitive system. This included time spent installing the program of the three computers I use daily because, while the application can be downloaded for the web, it sits on your hard-drive. That said, once you go Wisestamp, you won’t go back!

If you could have developed it before the web, it’s not native. Kindle, for instance, won’t make the grade because it simply disseminates the printed word in new ways. Video doesn’t make the grade because you could have watched it on TV. Fuggedabout downloadable PDF’s.

Made more obvious by the advent of the iPad, new digital approaches are daily emerging for those of us advancing ideas that matter. These include interactivity that enables users to customize how they view your data. The most cutting-edge include live data feeds coupled with vibrant data visualization.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation has been creating native digital content for years through its annual Kids Count survey. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has developed a wealth of interactive maps that enable viewers to slice and dice information about the magnitude of the nursing shortage, the progression of the obesity epidemic and other healthcare-related issues. The Wallace Foundation has developed a cost-calculator that enables youth development advocates to understand youth development program expense variables based on the Foundation’s extensive data collection on the topic.

As I discussed with Jeff, who recently founded the Center for Digital Information, some of the most robust examples are coming from news organizations. One we discussed is an
interactive graph from the New York Times which showed the most popular World Cup players based on a live data feed demonstrating how many times their names were mentioned on Face Book each day. (You can find other great examples of native digital content — some with topics even more important than soccer — by checking Jeff out on Twitter (@jeffcdi).

If you are like me, once you begin to fall in love with this type of approach, you want to learn how to make it your own. These days that usually means some sort of platform or template that you can hire a brainy juvenile to program for you. Google Public Data Explorer let’s you create interactive graphs from public data but doesn’t appear (yet) to let you do the same with your own. While the data sets from which it lets you create interactive charts are severely limited, that’s bound to change fast. If you are advancing messages about the impact of philanthropy or working to increase the transparency of your foundations grantmaking, you would do well to check out The Foundation Center’s Philanthropy In/sight service that lets you create your own interactive maps from the Center’s data base.

As you might sense, I am geeked about digital content. Please let me know about examples you are working on so I can share them more broadly through the Communications Network.

Recently we had the chance to implement this approach — I call it Conference Engagement 2.0 — with our very first corporate client: Working Mother Media (WMM) and Diversity Best Practices (DBP.) WMM produces a wide-array on conferences including the one we covered called Network and Affinity Leadership Conference.

In the day before the conference, I co-taught a half-day “Social Media Engagement” Workshop with Jennifer Brown, CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting. Workshop participants — who came from major corporations like Toyota and Dayton Hudson — then gained hands-on experience capturing more than 100 interviews the following day. One of the resulting video summaries was finished and ready for its premier at the closing plenary. (Don’t expect to learn what affinity groups are or do from this video — it is intended for audiences already acquainted with the purpose of affinity groups in corporate America.)

Based on the success of this effort at NALC, PhilanthroMedia is developing a partnership with Jennifer Brown Consulting to focus these services in conferences dealing with workforce leadership and diversity issues.

I expect to see a great deal of growth in this cost-effective approach to both expanding conference engagement and crowdsourcing conference content. Here’s why…

Old School: Experts are those who spoke behind podiums or sat on panels. Conference Engagement 2.0: The collective wisdom of conference attendees far exceeds that of designated presenters.

Old School: Attendees pay for the privilege of hearing experts. Conference Engagement 2.0: Attendees are eager for opportunities to position themselves as experts.

Old School: Writers, photographers and videographers are paid to create content. Conference Engagement 2.0: Conference attendees are willing to pay for opportunities to hone their new media skills and the privilege of creating content that is broadly distributed.

Old School: There is little reason to check back with the organizers website until next year. Conference Engagement 2.0: Content captured during the conference drives traffic to the organizers website for viral content that can be shared attendees to extend learnings.

Old School: Competition for sponsor dollars is tough. Conference Engagement 2.0: Sponsors are more demanding than ever – including opportunities to be positioned next to compelling and credible content and conversations.

If this sort of approach seems of interest for your next conference, let’s engage!